lost time incident 77
Welcome to another lost time incident. The seconds keep ticking along and getting away from us, forming a chain hand-to-hand that drags us into the future against our will. According to clocks and pendulums, stone circles and star charts, it’s been about a month since I sent one of these out and there’s a good reason for that: I only just this morning clawed myself out of a deep pit of muck in which I was imprisoned by the Verdant Monarch as revenge for attempting to usurp the throne. I’m covered in mud and ready to type.
Okay, actually, I was playing host the last few weekends to some work colleagues from India. So it goes. I showed them the ocean. I made sure they tried fresh strawberries and chipotle salsa (not at the same time). All the wonders of this part of the world.
All of which means my book project has been untouched as well. What I did instead, to create the illusion of progress, was I paid an artist to create some artwork for the project. Here’s two images from maddison (aka DataErase). I love her animation/glitch aesthetic and wanted to see what she would come up with after seeing a bit of my witches.town writing. The results:
I really should get back to editing that project. But not today!
Today, I’ll send out this newsletter and that will feel like enough of an act of creation that I can go back to laying on the couch reading books, listening to the sounds of passing planes and trains through the open window.
Anyway, here are some more words!
get it?
“I’m not here to make friends.” – Dr. Frankenstein, consoling himself when his corpse-son has nothing in common with him when it comes to interests or hobbies
monster self defense ($80 M-W-F)
Mummy: This one’s easy and a good monster to start with when you’re learning the art of self-defense. Get in a ready stance, feet planted wide, and find your center. Then, give the mummy a compliment and offer a high five. When it puts its hand up, slap its hand so hard the whole creature falls to dust from the impact. This technique’s so easy, there’s room for me to teach you in the course description, which I just did.
Want to defend yourself from Dogmans? Draculas? Fishwitches? MANY MORE?!? Gotta pay $80 for the rest and these are just the tip of the monster pile of self-defense knowledge I can impart. See you on the musty mats of the community centre!
morning affirmations from my rejected manuscript of inspirational living advice
Each of the following affirmations are free to a good home, because apparently the publishing world is not yet ready for my truths, even though they look amazing when placed on a photo of a natural landscape.
Repeat as required daily:
- I am strong. I am valued. The world will burn and I will learn to breathe ash.
- The world acts through me and I act through the world. I am one with shadows and fate.
- I am a person deserving of success. I will drink water. I will walk on two legs. I will maintain my form, all day, even when startled by earth fauna.
we are updating our occult privacy policy
You are receiving this communication from us because at some point in the last few years, we have:
- Viewed you through a scrying pool and/or mirror
- Crafted a double of you from blood and willpower and used it to manipulate your moods and actions
and/or
- Sunk into a dark liquid pool then rose again to the surface, but the surface was your eyes, through which we saw as you saw, thought as you thought, pressed against your iris as intimate as breath.
Due to new legislation, now we have to ask: Is it okay if we keep doing that?
ending theme song
Oh boy, that was fun, wasn’t it? Wow. Sure, some people like riding roller coasters, or falling in love, but subscribers to this mailing list know that nothing compares to idly scrolling down a long column of words.
The wind just knocked over a screen we put in front of our open front door to keep our neighbor from peering in, which means that either our neighbor now has control of the weather, or maybe it’s a windy enough day that we need to reconsider our open door policy.
If you don’t hear from me again, just assume I’ve ascended into the heavens, snatched up by powerful gusts that managed to lure me to the door with the screen-toppling ruse, and that from now on I can be found in the clouds.
Whoosh!
—Michael Van Vleet
Hey! Did you enjoy reading this? But did you find yourself thinking “Dang, if only this sort of thing were delivered directly into my inbox so I didn’t have to spend time on a website as if it were still the 90s or something!”?
You’re in luck! You can subscribe to the LOST TIME INCIDENT newsletter and finally class up your inbox.